When advocates of ‘freedom’ go too far

[webfact]

STOPPAGE TIME

When advocates of ‘freedom’ go too far

Tulsathit Taptim
The Nation 

 

BANGKOK: -- I’m all for press freedom, but I’m not defending Charlie Hebdo’s earthquake cartoon for one reason, and one reason only.

 

If I defended its right to ridicule, I would have to defend a horrible attack on its office in January last year as well. I mean, if you are ready to take it to the limit, you must be prepared to accept any consequence.

Twelve Charlie Hebdo journalists died in that attack. Defending the earthquake cartoon, which depicts victims "crushed" between layers of lasagne, equals defending a cartoon that mocked those 12 deaths. From what I've seen, Charlie Hebdo wouldn't care anyway about such mocking, but I'd rather stay away from a controversy.

Charlie Hebdo is taking freedom of expression to the extreme. In a fair world, people should be able to go to similar extremes with the publication as well. I doubt that grieving relatives of the Italian earthquake victims will choose to bomb Charlie Hebdo's office, but who would blame them if they did?

Freedom without responsibility can morph into anarchy. What Charlie Hebdo does means different things to different people. The publication satirises, provokes and insults. As the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Or in this case, one man's champion of free expression is another man's vicious provocateur.

The Italian relatives could easily lose the case if they decided to sue Charlie Hebdo. "Freedom of expression" seems to dictate the weekly magazine can publish any image it likes. But that's the whole point. If you can't win legally against the publication, what else can you do?

Make no mistake. I'm not calling for the publication's offices to be mobbed or subjected to anything worse. But if I were, I could conveniently invoke my "freedom of expression". You would condemn supporting such an attack as "indefensible", or "taking it to the extreme". But that's precisely what I'm saying.

Some 18 months after the attack that made Charlie Hebdo a beacon of press freedom, the publication is forcing even its most ardent supporters to think twice. There have been some attempts to defend the paper, mind you. One webboard poster invoked a famous defence often attributed to Voltaire: "I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Another said: "The thing about freedom of speech is that we are free to accept or reject what we agree with or find offensive."

But others argue that the right to ridicule must be exercised with human decency. The earthquake cartoon, they say, carries no redeeming value or hidden intellectual meaning. "There's no thought. Nothing of substance. It's not even outrageous, or sensationalist fodder," one said. The comment ended with: "Apparently the only Charlie Hebdo employees with sharp minds and souls were lost in that attack on their office?"

If you think that remark was insensitive, then you haven't seen the cartoon, which has gone viral in just the way Charlie Hebdo must have desired. The paper ran it in a special issue focused on the devastating 6.2-magnitude quake that hit central Italy late last month, killing hundreds of people and reducing ancient towns to rubble.

The cartoon carries the banner "Italian Earthquake" and depicts two people - a man and a woman - standing bruised and bloodied next to layers of rubble from which the feet of people are protruding. The man is dubbed "Tomato sauce penne" and the woman "Penne gratin". The people crushed between layers are captioned "Lasagna".

Charlie Hebdo has always stood by its right to mock. But in drawing and publishing the cartoon, the weekly was effectively drafting the argument for "the right to respond". What Charlie Hebdo has done is take a tragedy and twist the knife even further.

Critics said that, just as the paper deserved full sympathy following the massacre at its Paris office last year, it should extend similar treatment to those ordinary folk - none of whom were powerful or political figures - who lost everything in the earthquake. 

When people wept for the murdered Charlie Hebdo employees, at least we knew the reasons behind the brutal attack. In contrast the quake victims had crossed nobody and suffered a natural disaster that came out of the blue.

Unlike the "freedom of expression" that seems to be written in stone everywhere, such sympathy exists only in our hearts. They don't throw you in jail for not having it, but you should have it all the same. And Charlie Hebdo journalists, of all people, should have learned to be compassionate to others suffering in dire and unforeseen circumstances.

 

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/When-advocates-of-freedom-go-too-far-30294662.html

 

-- © Copyright The Nation 2016-09-07

[craigt3365]

I'm all for freedom of speech, but like pointed out here, there should be limits.  Sadly, how do you enforce this?  That cartoon was terrible.

[Ralf61]

19 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

Sadly, how do you enforce this? 

 

by simply not buying the next upcoming couples of their hebdo (French for "Weekly") editions. No cops, armies or NSAs needed...

[edwinchester]

The author seems rather confused when comparing the right to defend freedom of speech as similar with defending the following murderous attack.

Just another rambling Tulsathit article that sheds little light on the subject.

[daoyai]

The cartoon was dark humour somebody may have found it funny. Nothing to get worked up about.

[Burps]

"Make no mistake. I'm not calling for the publication's offices to be mobbed or subjected to anything worse. But if I were, I could conveniently invoke my "freedom of expression". You would condemn supporting such an attack as "indefensible", or "taking it to the extreme". But that's precisely what I'm saying. "

No you wouldn't be able to ask for violence and say you're using your freedom of speech...but you knows that...

 

Charlie was the first one to mock of the editors deaths...Some may think it goes too far, then why was it ok to draw mahomet? 

Like it or leave it Charlie is satirical, not a simple Daily Mirror or FOX news...

Nobody seems offended when they do the same with the blacks, with the americans, with the christians, with the politics, with Tchernobyl, with Fukushima....

 

[ClutchClark]

Has anyone given any consideration to the lasagna?

 

 

[Nerone]

Freedom of speech & expression is sometimes mistaken as freedom of insult, freedom of disrespect, and freedom of desecrate.

 

In this case what is concerning is that this is not only a single employed decision, but all the crew at the newspaper  agreed to publish this disrespectuful and childlish insult to the people in mourning...

[Usernames]

4 hours ago, webfact said:

BANGKOK: -- I’m all for press freedom, but I’m not defending Charlie Hebdo’s earthquake cartoon for one reason, and one reason only.

 

If I defended its right to ridicule, I would have to defend a horrible attack on its office in January last year as well. I mean, if you are ready to take it to the limit, you must be prepared to accept any consequence.

 

Absolute stupidity.  Freedom of speech and freedom of action are two different things even this fool should be able to figure out.

[elgordo38]

4 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

I'm all for freedom of speech, but like pointed out here, there should be limits.  Sadly, how do you enforce this?  That cartoon was terrible.

Yes it was but this is a different world than the Dick and Jane world we knew and grew up in. Today barriers are pushed and reasoning evaporates. Maybe the passed around the wonder weed before they put pen to paper. 

[sanukjim]

5 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

I'm all for freedom of speech, but like pointed out here, there should be limits.  Sadly, how do you enforce this?  That cartoon was terrible.

Once you install limits then you no longer have freedom. So is it partial freedom you seek ?

[JetsetBkk]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

"Apparently the only Charlie Hebdo employees with sharp minds and souls were lost in that attack on their office?"

 

He's got a point.

[craigt3365]

44 minutes ago, sanukjim said:

Once you install limits then you no longer have freedom. So is it partial freedom you seek ?

It's what we have in the US.  Not perfect though.

[craigt3365]

44 minutes ago, sanukjim said:

Once you install limits then you no longer have freedom. So is it partial freedom you seek ?

It's what we have in the US.  Not perfect though.

[Publicus]

 

Freedom of speech as understood and practiced in USA is broad and deep, however, it is strongest when applied to political speech. And even then political speech is limited by the Doctrine of the Clear and Present Danger as articulated a century ago by Scotus (in the case of an anarchist with a pile of weapons outside of a city hall).

 

When for instance, Pres. Duterte calls Pres. Obama a son of a whore, it's nothing more than the freedom for the pot to call the kettle black (so to speak). It is uncivil, impolitic and undiplomatic, not to mention crude, but it is one politician spewing out against another of the same cloth, even if the object of the intended derision is cut of a superior quality of cloth.

 

And while religion often has a privileged place in most societies, in Islam it is the ultimate authority. One needs to consider such factors in very realistic ways because some certain offended people do not take kindly to it.

 

Satarising victims of a natural disaster such as in this instance an earthquake, which is considered an act of God, i.e., a force majeure, is indeed offensive for no good reason or any redeeming social purpose. Freedom of speech in such matters is not a guarantee but it should be limited by an open discussion of taste and in the context of culture.

 

Don't know any reasonable person in society who would consider the 'cartoon' in any kind of good taste or light, given especially that ethnicity is also involved. Its author should suffer some kind of social sanction and cultural rejection, or an employment penalty, but that would be it.  

[sanukjim]

17 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

It's what we have in the US.  Not perfect though.

Describe a partial freedom in the US other then criminal or morality laws. And you are right about not perfect. To be more perfect then you would come under a Dictatorship or full Democracy which in it self can not survive.

 

 

 

 

[dave_boo]

What a bunch of namby-pambies. Who decides what is "too far"?  Me?  Because I'm offended by religion (can teach adults that there's an afterlife-as long as you keep giving money-but can't believe in Santa Claus nor the Easter Bunny?), football louts, the KKK, the Black Panthers, the BNP, rapefugees, etc. etc. etc.

 

Oh, wait; I can't decide what is too far?  Who can?  Why not just let freedom of speech be what it's supposed to.  Can say whatever you want, but as soon as you take action that's where it's gone too far.  Are people so insecure that they need to shut down dissenting viewpoints?  Are their beliefs so fragile that they can not be questioned?  Should the majority have the capability of silencing the minority?  Should a minority be able to cower a majority into a reticence out of a feeling of PC-ness?  It all seems so...fascist.

[mesterm]

9 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

I'm all for freedom of speech, but like pointed out here, there should be limits.  Sadly, how do you enforce this?  That cartoon was terrible.

 

Just look at how many cartoons there are making fun of Jesus. Some are very very obscene.

 

Yet you don't see Christians going out and killing people all over the place.

[Galactus]

charlie hebdo is out of line and lost a lot of respect with this incident imo.

and for the ones defending this as freedom of speech; is it OK if someone caricatures japanese people as 'french fries' after the atomic explosion during ww2?

[GOLDBUGGY]

14 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

I'm all for freedom of speech, but like pointed out here, there should be limits.  Sadly, how do you enforce this?  That cartoon was terrible.

Once you put limits on the freedom of speech, it isn't freedom of speech anymore. It become Censorship! 

 

Reminds me of when Playboy was taken to court for showing a woman topless, and Penthouse for showing the first woman frontage. But were acquitted on the grounds of freedom of expression and speech.

 

Many people may not have liked that ruling at this time, but part of having freedom is to give and take a little bit to.  We still need laws to protect the under aged, who are not mature or competent enough to make these decisions by themselves, but all these models were of age.